time and things like that, tapemeasures, scales and upturned palms, guessing weight by pulse and blink

so he turned from the naked-page books, peach and bile green and english-book red and said ‘i hate you’ and I hugged him, and all the fists hitting went on and on joined by little feet and squirming like a fork-pierced slow-worm, writhy, bubbling brown guts slowly beside the photocopier. So airless in here, in these bookstacks and wordpiles, dangerous numbers piled hap-hazardly jumbling us together with no windows flung open. they miss all these gulls, spewling, mew-turning for it is so windy today.
It calmed, and I signed us out in the feint-ruled sheets, lies about ed-psyc, sackable lies, should-know-better lines of newspaper reports and stolen child.
I hate him as much as he hates me, patience that reduces me to tears for my own sons, but pushing his feet to the clouds, brazenly in full view of school panes and head swivel chairs…He just screamed, screamed, screamed and clung on and worked his body to force forward through the air, another battle, another day. Swinging makes me feel sick now. and roundabouts for that matter, and the clouds weigh my head these days, for the little I can do but let him scream.

2 Responses to “time and things like that, tapemeasures, scales and upturned palms, guessing weight by pulse and blink”

There is a great entanglement of energies here, an attempt to encompass the quickly shifting energies of the child. The writing writhes and struggles in its sounds and tight changing rhythms perfectly reflecting the anti-struggle it describes and as a result the piece itself becomes an event, the writing is more than a mere descriptor of the event before, it is an event in and of itself.